To supplement my other post on conservatism, I’d like to submit what I believe conservatism is becoming, that being something less like a thought-out political movement (or strategy), and more like a sect.

My immediate impetus for advancing this was reading Lawrence Kudlow (conservative economist and MSNBC contributor), who, like any conservative worth his Don’t Tread On Me bumper sticker, latched on instantly to Obama’s reference to “collective action” in his inaugural address:

Quote:

“(Obama) connected the Declaration with his own liberal agenda: “ … that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedom ultimately requires collective action.” (My italics, not his.)… But this was no opportunity speech. This was a redistributionist, income-leveling speech. And it completely missed the point of the Founding Fathers some 237 years ago.

They were talking about the equality of opportunity, not results. Theirs was a declaration of freedom, not government power or authority.”

These grumbles are standard conservative boilerplate, but it reminded me that beyond boilerplate, the conservative movement doesn’t have much left to offer these days.

I don’t mean to imply that conservatism isn’t a political force to be reckoned with on Election Day, insofar as conservatism has absorbed nearly the entire Republican conversation for nearly a generation. It is simply that, the lemon is completely squeezed out in ways that can scarcely be denied by conservatives themselves.

As a movement, conservatism’s program has either been enacted to the extent that it ever could be, subverted by the heretical members of the GOP, or been soundly defeated. So communism, where it didn’t collapse of its own failures, has assimilated free markets without repudiating central authority, leaving the White Knight of conservatism, the capitalist, as happy as a pig in shit. Elsewhere the social agenda that the flyover state traditionalist wished to keep in a box is now parading down Main Street wearing rainbow slingshot briefs or taking the Oath of Office.

Where conservatives, (or at least their libertarian fellow travelers) have succeeded, the victories are corrosive. Yes, Labor has been crushed, and low and behold! The unemployment rate is finally keeping pace with wage stagnation! Oligarchs are in the catbird seat, despite their colossal mismanagement of the world economy, and the Middle Class both both in the US and in Europe is sinking into the tarpit. Well done, conservatives!

These failures, while not entirely the fault of conservatism, nonetheless leave conservatives with little to celebrate. Does anyone wonder why the conservative memory includes only one American president, Ronald Reagan? Consider the Olympian leap over three Bush administrations that the conservative must execute to find a leader theyare willing to own! But when they try to scrape up a presidential hopeful from that other glorious Republican epoch, the Contract With America years, they find only Newt Gingrich, a man so despised that eventually he began plotting an escape to the moon.

For all this, conservatism grew from promising soil. The intellectuals that picked up Goldwater’s torch--Buckley, Safire, even Pat Buchanan—seem like the Stoics of Greece compared to arch lunatics like Glenn Beck and Anne Coulter, organ-coveting free market vampires like John Stossel, and simple bottom-feeding bullies like Hannity and O’Reilly.

This is also to say nothing of the cottage industry of radio hosts/authors who churn out reams of left-baiting pages yearly, feeding an audience of rage filled malcontents while contributing nothing to the cause but a hopeless, backward-looking malice.

And even when conservatives of the 21st century try to establish themselves as thinkers, their theories are hopelessly barnacled by the talk radio and yellow journalism they wish to distinguish themselves from. Jonah Goldberg, online editor for the National Review website, has put out two books (Liberal Fascism and The Tyranny of Cliches) to establish his bona fides as a conservative scholar. And yet, if one can get past his books' pandering cover artwork, they will find that his dissertation on fascism assiduously avoids Mussolini and Franco in order to focus on Hillary Clinton and Neo, while his other book reduces the entire spectrum of left wing thought to a series of hiccupped slogans that sandal-wearing college students supposedly live their lives by.

So this is the desiccated nature of conservative thought today, a school that begins one level below the sewer, then jumps directly to the lower-middle brow, before saying “fuck this” and taking a job on Wall Street.

But it is from this rubbish heap of half-assed thinking that the current lifeblood of conservatism, the Tea Party, has emerged. One should not confuse its small successes with actual will power, however. But for the unfathomable wealth of the spoiled classes, and with massive heavy lifting by the right wing media, the Tea Party would either have floundered and died or brought forth candidates of sober intelligence who might have fulfilled the mandate of the original, less vicious conservative movement.

One wonders which of those outcomes the Tea Party’s patrons feared more._________________

actually, I think its deeply important to have two, seperate rambling, confused threads on conservatism that don't make any sense.

HEY BUDDY CAN YOU HURL ANOTHER COMIC ALL UP IN HEAH, WE'RE REALLY LOVING IT THUMBS UP_________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

you know, when I said you should make more of an effort to get to know and engage with the community, I didn't specifically mean start posting threads with great bricks of text, and then post comics when you don't like what people are saying.

We've seen your comic, Jason, we know writing isn't your strong point, maybe settle down on the threads and look at joining a conversation that is already happening?_________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

Fritterdonut got free stuff, a great shave, and a fabulous scent!
JWing got pancakes for brekkers AND learnt some cool new nerd stuff!
Pint does yoga! She does yoga a lot! Hey, they're letting her teach yoga classes, pretty much confirms she must be really good at it!

Why can't you just be happy and say hi and join in and maybe get like, what, a third - only a third, no more than a quarter really, if I'm honest - of an erection thinking about Pint doing yoga, and, you know, just stop being that guy?

We've seen worse spammers, and we've seen funnier spammers, and we've seen way way way more annoying spammers ... just if you wanna join in, do it, we'll all be pals!

Before you know it we'll all be eating Belgian Waffles in some Platz in some weird EuroCountry being amazed at the beauty of the women and the expense of the beer and the where does Moustache keep getting these pills from?

but how will that make us love his comics? or whatever the fuck he's here for?

how will talking to rubes like us that don't understand what it is to be an artist help with the WEAPON-BROWNSPERIENCE?_________________Once, at a local NOW meeting where I was the only male among about a dozen women, a feminism trivia contest was held. I came in third.

He could cow us with the might of his fierce intellect and the whip of his satirical insight into enslaving us, thus providing a base of labour for work on WeaponBrownyLand, and, to a lesser extent, EuroWeaponBrownyLand?

You know, I get that we don't really run this forum like a lot of other forums. Other (shittier) forums have a new thread for everything. "Hey guys, I just had a thought, and I wanted to give it its own thread!" That's why, I think, so many people make a "hi, I'm new" thread. I try to give new people the benefit of the doubt.

But Jason's also an annoying person, so I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't know how it works around here. He doesn't really interact, he just wanks all over the forum whenever the fancy hits him. And he's the equivalent of a 13-year-old boy: he makes a new thread every time the wind blows against his crotch. Or something.

Anyway, if his points weren't all so tired and banal, and he didn't act like such a tool, I might interact with him... but then he wouldn't be Jason. He'd be someone we might like to have around._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman